I walked beside Maria through the long underground tunnels, my boots scraping against the damp stone floor with every step. Pain still burned across my chest and torso where the fresh stitches pulled tight. Each breath reminded me of the table, the cuts, and the way she had worked inside me like it was nothing. My bionic arm hung at my side, heavy but steady now that it had rebooted. The blue lights pulsed low and calm in the dim emergency lighting. Maria stayed a little ahead, her tablet glowing in her hands as she scrolled through the map she had been building. She tapped the screen every few minutes, adjusting our direction to keep us heading the right way toward the north sector.
The tunnels felt endless. The air was thick and cold, smelling like old water and metal. Water dripped from cracks in the ceiling in steady plops that echoed off the walls. We passed more empty rooms and piles of junk, but Maria kept her eyes on the tablet and didn't stop for long. My legs still felt weak from everything that had happened, but I kept moving. I had to. Jonathan's body was out there somewhere, and this was the only way to get it back.
After a while I glanced over at her. "What's your name?" I asked.
She didn't look up right away. Her fingers kept moving on the screen. Then she spoke without turning her head. "Maria. You?"
"Jayden," I said.
We kept walking after that. The names hung in the air for a second but neither of us said much more. The sound of our footsteps filled the space between us. I watched the walls as we moved, noting the old pipes running along them and the faded markings that might have been directions once. My mind kept drifting back to the lab and the voice in my mind. 'We must not die.' It felt real, but I pushed it down. There was too much to deal with right now.
We walked for what felt like a long time. My stitches itched and pulled. Every time I shifted or took a deeper breath it hurt. Maria seemed focused, checking side passages on her map and muttering numbers under her breath sometimes. I stayed quiet mostly, but after passing another empty stretch I spoke again.
"How sure are you about this map?" I asked.
"It's good enough," she said. "Better than wandering blind."
We kept going. The tunnel curved slowly to the left. More dripping water. More shadows. The connection point still ached where my bionic met my stump, but it was bearable. I thought about Jonathan again, how he had pushed me out of the way. The image of his body split in two. Saving me when we didn't even know each other well, nowhere close to that. I wondered what they were doing with him now. The black-armoured teams. The trucks. I shook my head and focused on the path ahead.
Maria stopped suddenly near a heavier door set into the wall. It looked different from the others, reinforced and marked with old warning signs that had faded. She tried the handle but it was locked. She pulled out a small tool from her bag and started working on it.
"Help me with this," she said.
I stepped up and put my shoulder against the door while jamming my fingers into a small gap and pushing. The metal felt cold and rough. We pushed together after she clicked something open. The door groaned and swung inward. We stepped into another room filled with surgical equipment. Workbenches lined the walls. Old lights hung from the ceiling, some of them still working with a weak yellow glow. There were trays of tools, bottles of chemicals, and machines that looked like they had been left here years ago. Maria moved through it fast, checking labels and opening drawers.
"Useful," she said quietly.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a flat disc. She twisted it hard and it expanded with a series of clicks into a full backpack. She tossed it to me.
"Carry this," she said. "You're holding it for the rest of the way."
I caught the backpack and slung it over my shoulders. It was light at first but I knew it wouldn't stay that way. Maria started grabbing things. Vials of clear liquid, small packets of powder, metal instruments that looked sharp. She handed some to me to put in the bag. I opened the main compartment and started loading them carefully. The smell of the chemicals was strong, like cleaning fluid mixed with something sweeter. I didn't ask what any of it was. I just did what she said.
We worked through the room together. She would point at something and I would grab it or hold open the bag. Small increments of pain from the stitches mixed with the weight. I thought about how strange this was, walking with the girl who had cut me open not long ago. But she was leading me to a colleague of Mr.Wyvren who saved me.
"More of those vials on the top shelf," she said.
I reached up and pulled them down, placing them gently in the backpack. The glass felt cool in my left hand. We cleared out a whole section of the workbench. Maria took tools that looked like they could easily cut through bone and packed them away. I zipped compartments close as they filled.
After we had taken what she wanted, Maria found a clean workbench near the back. She set her tablet down on it and pushed a slider on the side. A keyboard popped out and a second small screen extended. She started typing fast, her fingers moving across the keys. Then she pulled out some of the vials we had taken and set up petri dishes. She slid them into a slot on the tablet setup and watched the results scroll across the screens.
I stood to the side holding the backpack, watching her work. The screens showed numbers and graphs that changed as the chemicals mixed. She didn't explain anything and I didn't ask. She seemed lost in it, typing commands and adjusting amounts. The room was quiet except for the tapping and the occasional beep from the tablet.
Minutes passed like that. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, trying to ease the pain in my side. The backpack was getting heavier. I thought about the tunnels ahead and how far we still had to go. My mind went back to the train station, the explosions, the blood, the bodies.
Maria glanced up at me after a while. She paused her typing and looked at my arm.
"Come here," she said. "Let me hold the bionic."
I was hesitant. Just a while ago she had tried to take it apart. But I held it out anyway. She took it carefully, turning it over and poking at the joints with her fingers. The blue lights reacted a little, pulsing brighter where she pressed.
"Connect it to my screen," she said.
As she spoke, the index finger on the bionic retracted back into the arm as I focused. A slit opened and a USB stick end popped out when I twisted my wrist. I moved my arm forward and pushed the end into the USB port on her tablet setup. It clicked into place.
Maria looked at her screens and started trying commands. She typed fast, trying to access different parts of the arm. Each time she pushed something the patterns on the arm flashed red and nothing happened. She tried again and again. Some things worked though. When she hit a certain set of keys the grappling line shot out of the palm with a sharp hiss, retracting after a second. Another set made small flames appear at the tips of the other fingers, burning steady for a few seconds before going out.
She kept at it, her eyes locked on the data. I stood there connected, feeling the small pulls and whirs in the arm as she tested. It felt strange, like part of me was being poked at again but not as bad as before. The pain in my body stayed constant, a reminder of what she had done.
"How do I open the core?" she asked, looking up at me. "The shell was impossible to pry open before, but the core itself was even more guarded. Open it for me."
I looked back at her and paused. I thought about it, trying to remember everything Mr.Wyvren had shown me. "Honestly, I don't know," I said. "The best I knew was how to open the shell or remove the arm. The core wasn't something I even thought of asking or focusing about."
Maria sighed. She pushed my arm back and unplugged the USB. The finger end retracted and rebuilt itself into a normal index. She closed the tablet back up into its regular form and stood up.
"I'll need better equipment to open it then," she said.
As she turned to leave a small rat ran by on the floor and squeaked. Neither of us jumped or looked scared. We both looked down at it, uninterested. Then it tried to bite her ankle with surprising speed. Maria jumped back a step. When it came at her again she stomped down hard on it, killing it. She kicked the body toward me.
"Put that in a vial and toss it in the bag," she said.
"That's disgusting," I replied.
"I don't care," she said, unbothered. She crouched down and looked around the room, maybe checking for more rats like that one.
I found an empty vial on a shelf and used a tool to scoop the rat into it. The body felt limp and warm still. I sealed the vial and dropped it into the backpack, trying not to think about it too much. Maria stood up after a minute and checked her tablet again.
"About a few hundred more meters at our next right turn and we should find an exit," she said. She slung her own bag over her shoulder and headed out the door, following her path again.
I followed her, the backpack heavier now with all the new stuff. I stared at her back as she led the way. She was a strange girl. She had cut me open, tried to kill me, pumped gas into my face, and now she was taking me through these tunnels to help get Jonathan's body. Part of me was scared of her. The way she moved, the way she didn't hesitate to stomp that rat or dissect me. But I was curious too. Who was her brother? Why was she down here alone? She had said she got separated and needed money, but there had to be more to it.
We walked on. The tunnels changed a little here, with more side doors and some old rail tracks on the floor. My body hurt more with the extra weight on my back but I kept up. I thought about Mr. Wyvern and the old man and how they would react to all this. The arm felt warm against my side. I wondered if giving her passwords later was a mistake, but it was too late then. We had a deal.
Maria checked her tablet every so often, making small adjustments to our route. We passed more rooms but didn't stop. The air got a bit warmer as we went deeper. I could hear faint sounds from above, maybe the city moving far overhead. The King's Gambit never really slept.
"Keep up," she said once when I slowed a little.
"I'm right behind you," I answered.
We turned at the next right as she had said. The path narrowed for a bit then opened up again. My mind kept going back to her. The way she had looked at the arm like it was the only thing that mattered. The slightest sympathy that flashed before. She wasn't all cold. But the dissecting part... that was hard to forget. I touched my chest lightly, feeling the stitches through my shirt.
We kept walking. I shifted the backpack to ease one shoulder then the other. The vials inside clinked softly. I wondered what she planned to do with all of it. More tests? Weapons? I didn't ask. She probably wouldn't tell me anyway.
The tunnel stretched on. More drips. More shadows. I stayed alert for any sounds of other people or those black-armoured teams. Nothing so far. Just us and the quiet.
Maria glanced back once. "Still alive back there?"
"Yeah," I said. "Stitches hurt but I'm moving."
"Good. We don't need you dropping now."
"Maybe next time don't cut up random people."
"You're right, killing you would've saved time."
"But then you wouldn't have gotten such an amazing deal."
"are you still talking?"
We continued like that. Step after step. The backpack dug into my shoulders. I adjusted the straps again. Maria's pace stayed steady. She checked the map one more time as we approached what looked like a larger junction ahead.
We were getting closer. I could feel it. Jonathan's body waited. I hoped we could get it back without more fighting. The bionic arm pulsed softly, ready if I needed it.
Maria didn't say much more as we walked. I didn't push. We had a long way still, even if she said it was only a few hundred meters. In these tunnels that seemed to feel like ages.
I kept following, curious and scared about the girl in front of me. Her brother. Her plans. The arm she wanted so badly. All of it mixed together in my head as we moved deeper into the dark.
The path turned again. We kept going